


A Hopeful Confusion

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: For Family [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7363192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Attack on the Tower, there is confusion on many parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hopeful Confusion

With the help of the Force, Ahsoka's supporting shoulders, and a Noghri phalanx, they all, minus Bail, made it back inside the Tower proper, and Ahsoka mostly remote-piloted herself toward that special chamber, to get Ana -- _Darth Vader_ inside it. She needed to fix the suit, again. He wasn't in as much pain this time, but he was crippled, and they could not afford that.

Bail would follow later, Ahsoka hoped. She needed … absolution? Someone to vent to? She didn't even know. This monster that had one been her Master had done horrible, horrible things, and yet she kept falling back into him, like her Skyguy really was in there.

Vader dragged himself along, the imprisoning weight of the suit feeling worse than usual -- the hit to the controls had not rippled to the neural relays of the prosthetics, but had fried some of the external controls that helped propel the legs -- and was mostly lost in his own mind. Confusion over Ahsoka's actions and Organa's roiled in him, much as he could feel her mind's erratic twists and turns. He could almost hear that ancient nickname in her thoughts... and for the first time in decades, it did not make him want to choke the life from her. 

It wasn't until she moved from him enough to open the chamber that he saw the blaster burns scattered across her body, and he hissed through the half-shorted regulator at her. Her lekku, normally so vivid, were pale and limp, lank against her shoulders and back. "No. You're wounded."

"And?" She stared at him blankly. "The girls can fix me later; your suit needs a new relay or four," she shot back. "I can keep going long enough to do it."

That he had said it, though, made her heart both weep and sing in one moment. Anakin would have put her first. She cut that thought off; this was not Anakin, she had to stop doing that!

//I hear you, you know,// he told her silently, because that had been nearly a shout into his mind, close as they were. 

The utter hell of it, though, was... that he didn't, entirely, want to agree with her. He was Darth Vader... but was he really, now? His mind felt so different, so much clearer... 

Skywalker was weak, he tried to tell himself, tried to focus, as he frowned at her. //It needs replacement again, is what it needs, but that's not the point.// 

She took a deep breath, feeling that swirl of… what? What was that? Skyguy but harder, colder, a blending of a man who loved too deeply and one who had been cut off from everything, even something as simple as touch. She wound up closing her eyes… but not the bond. She didn't even mute it, leaving herself entirely too vulnerable.

//Let me help you.// Now, with the suit, was one meaning. The other… the other was that she would stay, give him an anchor to find out who he was without the miasma of the Emperor's machinations hovering on him. Of her own will, she reached out, resting her hand on an unscorched portion of his suit. //Vader,// and she said the name with respect to his self-concept, //you are changing, without his influence. I want to help you.//

//Little One,// he answered, looking down at her, ignoring the tumult of damage warnings (the pain he felt was nothing the suit's electronics could register) to focus on her face, the strength of will in her, //when did you get so strong?// 

Ahsoka's heart possibly skipped a beat. Or maybe she held her breath too long. He had called her 'Little One'? 

No, wrong thing to focus on. Answer him, she told herself. //I learned it from my Master, so I wouldn't fail him ever again,// she answered, raw and honest, before she could stop herself.

Two thoughts flashed across his mind at once. 'You didn't fail me, everyone else failed you' warred with 'You _left_ me!', and he couldn't tell which one was stronger, which one he more believed. He wanted the comforting weight of his rage, wanted to shake her senseless... almost as much as he wanted to wrap her into his arms. Not that he would feel her, but she would feel him. 

And probably flinch. His lips wanted to pull back from his teeth, and he hissed a sigh at her. //That man died in Mustafar's lava, 'Soka...// 

She was too tired. She hurt. He hurt. They couldn't do this now, and she certainly did not need to give into her urge to just howl her emotions to the wind.

"Inside, Lord Vader," she told him gruffly, even as his suit's HUD gave a strong warning beep. "I've got to get that thing working again." 

Words out loud were easier. Words out loud didn't scrape her soul into a thousand cuts, because she didn't want to give up, not any more than he had given up on her when everyone else had. 

He made a low noise at her -- all he could manage, really -- and shot her a sour look beneath the helmet before he let her win and moved to step back inside. It sealed, and he activated the remote waldoes that helped him escape the suit. The waldoes moved the pieces to the small airlock, and cycled them out one by one for the Noghri to take to her. 

Ugh. One of the vitapaste pouches had ruptured, he saw as he was disconnecting the chest armor. At least he couldn't actually smell it. The taste was unpleasant enough. 

To his vague amusement, he knew exactly when the pieces that were contaminated by it reached her, from her irritated, nose-wrinkled reaction across the bond. Then she was immersed in working, her mind going much more still and calm while she was, letting him somewhat rest.

++++

Ahsoka was all but blind in her fatigue as she stumbled back down to where the girls were… with none of the Noghri impeding her after her vicious fighting for their Lord. She had tried to ask if they needed help, but they were quick to point out she was injured, and they had seen to their injured and dead while she worked for their Lord's well-being.

Winter saw the door cycle open and was quick to get the medkit, while Leia went and guided Ahsoka to a cushion on the floor this time. The young ladies would do all they could for her, even as they had to fight the flinches as the Togruta hissed or whimpered, her ability to turn it into the Force completely shot currently, by how tired she was.

They had seen, clearly, how incredibly skilled a warrior this woman was, and it held them in awe… and wariness.

Leia thought they were doing well at keeping it hidden, keeping their hands steady and gentle, until Ahsoka looked blearily over one shoulder and grumbled, "I'm not going to hurt _you two_ ; stop worrying so much. You'd think you'd never seen a Force-battle before..." 

"They haven't, Ahsoka," her father said as he stepped back out of the comm suite, "Winter, let me take that over," he added as he came closer. 

"As you wish," Winter said, moving to make space. She could easily have finished, but had a sense that the adults needed the contact. Ahsoka closed her eyes, a wave of grief washing over her at Bail's words. 

All of the Force users were gone? Or driven so deep into hiding that none of them had aided the Rebellion? She was not going to contemplate the _Ghost_ 's crew. 

Well, a flip side of that was hopefully it meant Maul was finally dead for good. She had no desire to run into the Zabrak ever again.

"Thank you, Winter and Leia," Ahsoka told them, even as she appreciated the firmer hand Bail had in getting the bandages tight. "So how much poodoo am I in for removing Ozzel from his rank?" she asked the former Senator, showing a crisp awareness of who that had been. He'd been a waste of space in the war; she wasn't surprised he'd come down as an Emperor's ally in this.

Bail snorted sharply, shaking his head though she couldn't see it -- she would feel it, and that was good enough. "Self-defense that clear-cut? Anyone that wants to give you trouble for it is going to have to come through me." He realized what she had to have thought in the next moment, and squeezed an unwounded bit of shoulder gently. "Alderaan _is_ a Core world, old friend. Your crew's survivors are Rimward." 

"That's my trick, reading minds," Ahsoka protested. It didn't come near to answering her worries over people, though. Rimward or not, the galaxy had been dangerous for those who used lightsabers. She refused to ask after anyone else, no matter how oddly Vader was acting, still guarding that one secret. 

"You can read minds?" Winter asked, curious, and wanting to know more about what she could do.

"Some?" Ahsoka admitted. "It takes effort, and helps if I have a rapport with the person involved. Mostly, I get impressions, and add to it what I see in their body language or hear in their biometrics."

"You hear biometrics?" Leia had to ask, skeptical of that last. 

Ahsoka nodded slightly, exhausted, but not really wanting to be silent, yet. Leia was a very quiet presence, but Winter was less so. And Bail's was familiar enough that he was easy to read. "My montrals are much better than a Human's ears, Leia, and they register a different range of frequencies." 

"Your trick or not," Bail replied, now that he could get a word in edgewise, working on the last of the wounds, "I didn't survive all of our trouble by being oblivious to what people were thinking. And besides, I know you. 

"Which means I know you need sleep. Do you want me to sit in with you, until you can?" Yes, Ahsoka was in fact borrowing the bedroom for this rest; he had every faith that his daughter would not object. 

"I just need a corner of the floor and you know it, Bail," she protested. She'd soldiered through most of the Clone War, sleeping wherever she could, sometimes not even making it further than the decking of their ship, or falling exhaustedly on top of whichever of her Masters or clones was unlucky enough to be closest. Working out who she was after she left the Order had not improved her sleeping habits in the least. 

"You deserve a proper sleep," Leia said firmly. "I have to continue to learn what I can, to be ready for the Senate," she added, "and would feel better if my voice and research weren't potentially intruding on your rest."

"Oh she's as pushy as any of you senators ever were," Ahsoka said, half-amused. "And no, Bail, you should stay with Leia. I'll be fine."

"Leia doesn't need me second-guessing her choices for any remarks," Bail replied, shifting to look at those wide blue eyes for a moment. "But you're not alone now.

"And of course she is, I raised her." 

Leia sat a little taller for that faith in her. Ahsoka gave her a quick smile and a wink, before she yawned. 

"Okay, horizontal, and sleep until the next crisis or demand," she said, wobbling a little to get to her feet. That horizontal was going to actually be curl in as tight a ball as possible no matter where her injuries were was a given in her mind.

"We'll have food for you when you wake," Winter promised, getting a weary nod of gratitude.

Bail had gotten to his feet with her, and at that wobble he tugged her arm up over his shoulders -- carefully -- so that he could get his arm around her waist. Grown woman she might be, but right now, exhausted and hurting, she reminded him of that young child-soldier he'd known, and he couldn't do anything except take care of her. 

"You picked up all her bad habits," Ahsoka said, too tired to censor, and knowing he'd know who she meant.

"I happen to think most of them were good ones," he replied, as soft as her voice had been, as he got her to the bed and was relieved to find it already turned back. She pushed at the rest of her armor to get it off, what hadn't been removed in the course of treating her injuries, and crawled into the bed gratefully.

"He's still in there, Bail… and that's tearing me apart," she admitted as she closed her eyes, curling up as he brought the blankets up over her. "Just… try to keep him away from his anger, and maybe… maybe I can get somewhere."

Bail reached to lay a careful hand on her shoulder, listening to her aching voice, not certain if he entirely believed that, or not. But there had to be something to it, given everything. "Then you've got to try, Ahsoka... I'll be here, when _you_ need an ear." 

Well, until he could send a certain set of orders, anyway. Then there'd be someone she wanted to see much more. Bail could hide the man, once her Captain, among the Embassy staff for her.

++++

Once Ahsoka was completely asleep, breathing deep and even, and seemed like she would be staying there, Bail went back out to join his daughter and foster-daughter. Leia glanced up at him, finished recording her notes for how to address the inequity suffered by those worlds with predominantly non-human populations, and then turned off the recorder.

Winter eased back from her attentive pose as Leia moved to hug her father hard and long.

"Father, you're safe," she breathed, now that all injuries and fighters were taken care of. "I wanted to be out there helping!"

"She didn't set foot anywhere near the door," Winter said, just to reassure him. There was a hiss of a promise from the shadowy watchers; it was clear she would have been stopped.

Bail made a quietly amused noise at the interplay between Winter, Leia, and the quiet Noghri bodyguards, and hugged his daughter. "Yes, I'm just fine, sweetheart. And of course you wanted to help... but at the moment, you cannot risk yourself like that." 

"I know," she said, somewhat glumly. She then sighed loudly and stared up at his face. "I think the galaxy flipped upside down. I still have trouble believing what I saw out there."

"That's both of us, Bail," Winter told the man. "Everything we thought we knew turned on its ear when we were told the Emperor was dead, but actually watching that fight earlier today? That was something else."

Bail shook his head slightly, holding on to his daughter gently. "I understand the feeling, Leia, I really do. It's been a wild ride, these last few ten-days... and today was no different. It's been... almost nineteen years," he said, shaking his head again at how fast the time went, "since I was near that kind of a fight." 

Leia let her eyes go wide. "You say that like it was once common to be near that kind of a fight," she pointed out, shock running through her.

"Did the war come to Alderaan even?" Winter asked. "You were as precise in your chosen targets as I was taught to be by our governess." She had picked up on not using the name earlier in the day.

"No, not to Alderaan, but I was on several of the missions that attempted to negotiate treaties with the Separatists -- which generally ended in something about like that, but with battle and assassin droids on the other side of the lightsabers," Bail answered, watching the shock in his daughter's eyes with something like amusement. "And there were a few attacks here on Coruscant, too. For some reason... reasons which make _so much more_ sense now, the Separatists kept trying to kill those of us that wanted to stop the violence before there were any more deaths." 

"Is this something safe to speak of now, or…" Leia let her voice trail off, worried that the Noghri would get restless or this would stray too close to the truth of her parentage again. "And either way, that's how you knew Lady Tano?"

"Yes," Bail agreed, "it is. She was often sent with us... before she left the Order. As to the wars... I'd hope, with the Emperor dead, all of the real history of the Clone Wars can finally be told. 

"Or at least what of the truth that there are survivors to tell." 

Vorkhiron -- or at least, Leia was almost certain this was Vorkhiron again -- shifted forward, looking from one of their faces to the next. "...you speak the truth of the Destroyers-of-Worlds? The nonliving and their death-poisons?" 

Bail looked at the small, dangerous being, nodding once. "I would like to, yes. It has been hidden for too long, and the sacrifice of many brave men… and women… buried to be forgotten."

Winter was curious at the Noghri reaction, and noted the other watchers had shifted, almost fully visible, so they could be closer to hear this. Leia was just relieved that none of them looked very violent at the moment.

Vorkhiron nodded, and all of his needle-teeth flashed in what Leia had learned was a smile. "Then you will speak. We know what they did to our world -- and what the unnatural one, the betrayer, allowed to continue -- not what happened to other worlds. The clans have become curious." 

Bail had not expected this, but… the history needed to be spread. "Lady Tano would know more; she was on the front lines more often, beginning only six months into the war, up until just a few ten-days before the final campaigns." He pulled up the planets that had suffered the worst in his memory, then discarded that. "The unnatural one… you mean the man that Lord Vader disposed of yesterday, with Lady Tano?" he questioned.

There was a room-wide rumble of satisfaction and pleasure, and Vorkhiron nodded. "Yes. We had never entered his presence before, but he stank of foul things. ...we will ask for her tales as well, then, later."

"I think the most important tale is the one I learned too late, one that very few people were told." Bail felt he could share the Jedi revelations now. "The Sith Master, Darth Sidious, that was behind the Separatist movement with the nonliving? The droids? was known to the Republic as Chancellor Palpatine. He had engineered the events leading to the entire war, on both sides, in order to create a situation that would grant him more power while also setting up the ability to eliminate all of those he saw as his enemies." 

Leia wrapped her arms around herself as the temperature in the room seemed to plummet, the hissing snap of Noghri speech rippling for barely a breath before they seemed to almost forcibly silence themselves, and Vorkhiron made a small motion with clawed fingers for her father to keep going.

"The clone troopers were sent into these battles almost before they were mature, let alone fully trained, to meet the unending production of drone warriors." Bail had to take a deep breath against the past. "In the end, Darth Vader eliminated the Separatist leaders, effectively ending the war, with punitive efforts put in place swiftly against their sectors. Those methods spread to formerly occupied planets, in the guise of rooting out enemy collaborators. And then to systems that had always been loyal, supposedly because of seditious activities," Bail continued. "And that, Leia, is how the Empire was born and solidified itself in the span of only a generation."

Leia was still cold, and the Noghri were terribly still. Terribly still, seeming as though they were barely even breathing, and Leia knew, somehow, that they were almost beyond angry. 

"Betrayer-of-All," Vorkhiron finally declared, very softly. "Of _All_. 

"And our Lord Darth Vader slew the heads of the nonliving. This is a good thing to know." 

Bail did not argue; he knew from Obi-Wan that it had been done by Vader, fully committed to the Dark Side. Yet… was there any course they could have found by that point that wouldn't have ended in those deaths?

"I believe, from what I see of your people, your dedication to your ways, that you would have respected the clone troopers," he ventured to tell Vorkhiron. "They were born to be soldiers, trained as warriors for all their lives, but it was also their way of life, their culture. They were the best at what they did." Which, he said in the silence of his heart, was to serve the Jedi, making two halves of an effective war machine.

"Surely some histories have been saved, on various worlds," Winter reasoned. "Once the Republic is stable, we can quietly search it out, and bring memory back to those who gave so much."

Vorkhiron made a low noise, then nodded. "The ones who all smell the same, who follow the Lord Darth Vader. When they first came to the homeworld, the warriors then slew many. They fought well and honorably... and have been good distractions, when we must act." 

Leia was certain that last was a _joke_ , and she made a softly amused noise to him, before nodding at Winter. "I hope you're right, Winter." 

Bail gave a smile at the Noghri, before breathing out. "He kept them with him… of course he did." That made so much sense. The clones that could not escape the order, the ones that never were saved from their chips, all still serving Vader as he eliminated the last of the Jedi? That explained the more than fanatic loyalty of Vader's Fist.

Winter caught that, put it with other pieces of what she had heard and observed. Darth Vader was a fallen Jedi, and she was beginning to worry about when Leia did learn the full truth.

"Speak more," Vorkhiron encouraged, and Bail turned his thoughts to sharing the little plots that, in retrospect, bore the worst of Palpatine's machinations, minimizing his recall of Jedi exploits, and keeping it focused on the clone troopers, just to be safe.


End file.
